An event that was billed as an honest conversation about race took a turn for the worse when a white pastor decided may have gotten a little too truthful after a white pastor tried to redefine the term, “white privilege.” He thinks it should be changed to “white blessing.” Yes, really.
Pastor Louie Giglio, who leads Passion City Church in Atlanta, recently sat down with Christian rapper Lecrae and Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy to have a religion-fueled discussion about the racial climate in America. And while the entire conversation was not immediately available for review, one reporter posted a video snippet from the talk that suggested it spun all the way out of control as it appeared that a white man was attempting to revise history.
The nearly two-minute-long clip focuses solely on Giglio and his words pointing to what he described as positive attributes of American slavery. Included in his diatribe was the unfortunate choice of words, “the blessing of slavery,” a phrase that both Lecrae, a Black man, and Cathy could be seen nodding their heads in agreement to.
“We love the blessing of the cross but we don’t love to sit in it and realize this is what God’s asking me to do — to die for myself and live for him — whatever context that’s going to look like for me,” Giglio started off harmlessly enough. But his rhetoric quickly devolved into the racially tone-deaf variety.
“I wanna flip that upside down because I think the other side if it’s true with our nation’s history,” he continued. “We understand the curse that was slavery. White people do. But we miss the blessing of slavery that it actually built up the framework for the world that white people live in and lived in.”
After being encouraged by Lecrae and Cathy, Giglio kept on.
“And so a lot of people call this white privilege and when you say those two words it just is like a fuse goes off for a lot of white people because they don’t want somebody telling them to check their privilege,” he added before offering a solution where one wasn’t needed in the first place.
“Hey, if the phrase is the trip-up, let’s get over the phrase and let’s get down to the heart. Let’s get down to what then do you want to call it,” he said. “And I think maybe a great thing for me is to call it ‘white blessing’ — that I’m lying in the blessing of the curse that happened generationally that allowed me to grow up in Atlanta … where Black people did not have equal rights in this city (Atlanta).”
Watch the unfortunate video below.
Again, it was unclear when the conversation took place. But really, the timing is beside the point considering the apparent audacity of Giglio take it upon himself to redefine the accurate term of “white privilege.” Nevermind the fact that he referred to slavery as a “blessing” and proceeded to try to whitesplain his reasoning for saying so.
Lecrae was also getting some heat on Twitter for allowing Giglio to speak so recklessly and inaccurately.
Lecrae in 2016 famously received backlash after tweeting an image of Black people on a plantation with the caption, “My family on July 4th 1776.”
Cathy, Chick-Fil-A’s CEO, is also a controversial figure for his stance against gay marriage.
Chances are that Giglio will say that his words were taken out of context. And perhaps they were. We may never know until the full video from the conversation is released. But on the surface, it ironically appeared that he was exercising his innate white privilege while attempting to redefine white privilege because white people are uncomfortable with the term white privilege as the nation continues to protest against racism.
This is America.
SEE ALSO:
Cops Don’t Arrest Any Armed, Violent White Thugs After Shooting At Protest In New Mexico
Privileged White Moms Are Exposed In Facebook Group After ‘Racist’ George Floyd Comments
